Saturday, December 31, 2011

DTN News - 2012 NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS: 2012 Hong Kong ~ Predicted To Be For The People Year - Photo Courtsey Robie SethSource: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - December 31, 2011: Revellers around the world are celebrating the end of 2011 and starting to see in 2012. Hong Kong property prices and rents expected to fall in 2012

In Hong Kong the countdown to 2012 was made in giant illuminated numbers on the side of a skyscraper facing the harbour. Toronto, Canada is 12 hours behind Hong Kong. Photo Courtsey Robie Seth

DTN News - 2012 NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS: New Zealand Mark The Start Of 2012Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - December 31, 2011: Revellers around the world are celebrating the end of 2011 and starting to see in 2012.

Bad weather prompted some New Zealand planners to cancel outdoor events, but a fireworks display off Auckland's Sky Tower started at midnight (1100 GMT). Toronto, Canada is 18 hours behind Auckkand, New Zealand.

Friday, December 30, 2011

DTN News - NEW YEAR GREETINGS: DTN TIGER - New Symbol / Logo For 2012Source: This article compiled by Roger Smith from DTN News(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - December 30, 2011: To Our Readers and Viewers of DTN News Plus Everyone in the Global Village, A Very Happy Prosperous New Year 2012 from DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News. Tigers are the largest members of the cat family. They live in Asia and belong to the same genus as the lion, leopard, and jaguar.

North Korea was Tuesday preparing a massive ceremonial farewell to late leader Kim Jong-il as it strove to strengthen a new personality cult around his youthful son and successor Jong-un.The secretive state has so far given no details whatever of Wednesday's funeral for its "Dear Leader" of the past 17 years.

But analysts say the regime, as it did in 1994 when Kim Jong-il's own father died, will use the event to shore up loyalty to the new leader and will likely mobilize hundreds of thousands of people.The untested Jong-un, aged only in his late 20s, has been thrust into the world spotlight since his father died suddenly on December 17 aged 69.Official media has added several titles to his flimsy CV, declaring him "great successor", supreme commander of the world's fourth-largest military and head of the ruling party's powerful Central Committee.The son, who has not yet been formally appointed to the party and military posts, has been the central figure in scenes of mourning at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where his father lies in state in a glass coffin.On Monday he met the leaders of two South Korean delegations at the palace, expressing "deep gratitude" for their presence, according to official media.South Korea, which has remained technically at war with the North for six decades, has responded cautiously to the shake-up in its nuclear-armed neighbour.Unlike in 1994, the Seoul government expressed sympathy to the North's people and made other conciliatory gestures.But it authorized mourning visits to Pyongyang by just the two South Korean delegations, a restriction that the North termed "inhuman".Lee Hee-ho, widow of late South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, and Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jung-eun paid respects Monday to the late leader and expressed condolences to Jong-un.

Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il held the first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000 and Hyundai pioneered cross-border business projects.While Kim Jong-il had 20 years to prepare for the communist world's only dynastic succession, Jong-un has had barely three. Analysts will closely watch the funeral for possible clues about who will have most influence with him.Jong-un, "great successor to the Juche (self-reliance) revolutionary cause and sagacious leader of our party, state, army and people, is at the helm of the Korean revolution", the North's news agency reported early Tuesday.South Korean media, basing their predictions on arrangements for the 1994 funeral, said the obsequies would likely begin at 10:00 am Wednesday, with Jong-un and senior officials paying final respects at the memorial palace.They said the military was expected to fire a 24-gun salute and troops would march through central Pyongyang, accompanying a limousine carrying Kim's coffin and another car with a giant photo.Military marching bands would play funeral music while convoys of motorcycles and cars carrying flowers and senior officials would follow the coffin as hundreds of thousands looked on, the media forecast.Mourning will officially end Thursday with a nationwide memorial service including a three-minute silence, the North's media has reported.On Tuesday the South Korean delegations, who were to return later Wednesday across the heavily fortified border, met the North's de facto head of state and parliament chief Kim Yong-nam, state media reported.Lee and Hyun expressed hope that declarations agreed at summits in 2000 and 2007 would be implemented, it said.On their way home they stopped off at the Kaesong industrial estate just north of the border — the last major joint venture still functioning, the South's Yonhap news agency reported.The complex, utilising the North's labour in Seoul-owned light industries, has survived high cross-border tensions of recent years.

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - December 25, 2011: A bomb blast during Christmas mass left 35 people dead and dozens wounded at a Nigerian church near the nation’s capital of Abuja.

The radical Muslim sect Boko Haram claimed responsibility for both the Abuja-area explosion, which left bodies on rooftops and in nearby gutters, as well as a bombing near a church in Jos, in which one police officer was killed. In all, at least 39 people were killed Sunday during ongoing sectarian violence in Nigeria, which also included at least three explosions in Yobe, an agricultural state in the country’s northeast that has often been at the heart of fighting between security forces and Boko Haram.

The Islamist group routinely attacks police and security forces as well as civilians in Africa’s most populous country. A faction of the group, whose name roughly means “Western education is forbidden,” has used increasingly violent means to advance its call for a strict interpretation of Islamic law in Nigeria. Fifty percent of the population of the oil-rich nation of 155 million is Muslim and 40% is Christian.

Diplomats and global security analysts say the sect, which has members in Cameroon, Niger and Chad, maintains contact with terror groups in North Africa and Somalia.

Last year, explosions in Jos on Christmas Eve killed 32 people and left 74 wounded. In August, an attack on UN headquarters in Abuja killed 20 people. In recent days, ongoing clashes with paramilitary forces in the north of the country had left 61 people dead. On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Abuja issued a warning for Americans to be “particularly vigilant” around churches and public crowds.

With Sunday’s bombings, Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for at least 504 deaths in Nigeria this year alone, according to a count by the Associated Press.

According to local newspapers, the Abuja blast ripped through St. Theresa's Church in the town of Madalla at the end of the 6 a.m. Mass of Nativity. The parish priest of St. Theresa’s, Rev. Fr. Isaac Achi, told Nigerian newspaper This Day that more than a dozen cars leaving the church were destroyed, packed with bodies inside that were burned beyond recognition.

“Nigeria must intensify its efforts in the area of security and guarantee freedom of movement and worship,” the newspaper reported Achi as saying.

The second attack occurred shortly after in the central city of Jos, near the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church. Government officials said one police officer was killed when gunfire broke out among those outside the church, according to the Associated Press. Two undetonated explosive devices were also reportedly discovered in nearby buildings.

Jon Gambrell, chief Nigeria correspondent for Associated Press, said via Twitter that Nigeria’s secret police, the State Security Service, claimed three people died in suicide attacks on its headquarters in the town of Damaturu, in Yobe state.

The attack on the Abuja-area Catholic church came just hours after Pope Benedict XVI delivered his traditional Christmas message from the Vatican. A spokesman for the Vatican, Father Federico Lombardi, condemned the bombings as “terrorist violence.”

“We are close to the suffering of the Nigerian Church and the entire Nigerian people so tried by terrorist violence, even in these days that should be of joy and peace,” Lombardi said, according to Reuters news agency.

GIVEN the place of Science and Technology in the technological transformation of the country, the paltry allocation of N39 billion to the sector in the 2012 budget has been described as a major barrier to the actualisation of the desired...

UMAR Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 2009 Christmas day alleged underwear bomber of a US jetliner, may be laying the grounds for an eventual appeal of his terrorism case. This is after he had pleaded guilty to the offence.

CONCERNED over the recent threats to bomb some 21 designated areas in Jos, the Plateau State capital, by unknown hoodlums before December 26, religious leaders voluntarily went on air yesterday to appeal to people of the state to demonstrate love...

NIGERIA’s former Ambassador to China, Ambassador Victor Chibundu has called on the African Union (AU) to nip the Democratic Republic of Congo crisis in the bud. According to him, there has been a lot of publicity in the international and...

NIGERIANS have been asked to take the opportunity of the raging debate on the removal of oil subsidy to reach a consensus with the government on the urgent need to move the country from its present debilitating wealth sharing structure, to a...

NIGERIANS have been urged to play their own individual roles in the efforts to address security challenges facing the nation as government alone cannot solve all the problems without the cooperation of the citizenry.

THE dreams of those planning to thwart the existing peace between Benue and Taraba states have been dashed as the youths of Wukari Local Government Area of Taraba State have resolved to do everything in their power to ensure lasting peace between...